We talked about this in my software engineering course back in 2001. Surely we can start acting on these finding a quarter century later right? Right?? Joking (I guess?) aside, this really should be taken more seriously.
For the most part it is just soul crushing to constantly be interrupted but people legit die because of software errors due to these kinds of things. You think someone who has 30 minutes free a day to do code reviews for a whole team is going to do a good job, regardless of their intention?
Software is driving cars, flying planes, scheduling trains, pretty much everything in modern life. Yet we are fragmenting our codebases, micromanaging to the point of focus and productivity loss, and to make up for that we are trying to leverage ai tools that were rushed to market. Buckle up folks, we are in for a bumpy ride.
11 years ago there was an article in Russian LiveJournal, talking about the same. It compares programmer’s work with falling asleep and about how hard it is to get back to that “sleep-like” state if you’re interrupted.
My friend had a t-shirt that says “fuck off I’m coding” on the back across the shoulders. If anyone interrupted him he’d pack up for the day and go home.
Good article, but it goes so much further than this. This is why a lot of passionate devs are nocturnal. Why the venn diagram overlap between devs and expensive noise cancelling headphones is massive. It is why lots of (voluntary) programming is procrastinated on, and ultimately simply kills a lot of software that could have been. Not to mention the software that is, could have a higher quality, leading to less frustrated users and less dead beat jobs in support.
So go on over and ask Derrek or Sheryl if they have that PDF that was sent to everyone.
Most devs have known this for decades, so let’s wait another 20 years before we get a study to confirm all that too.
Coding at night is my happy place…
Night is the only “me” time I can get.
Funny thing: developers say the same.
And what, we should listen to them? Imagine that! /s
Abolish open office plans for programming.
But have you considered the magic of being together? 🌈⭐️
Meetings are the bigger problem but yes
I could at least plan around meetings, random our conversations and wallops were the bane of my years coding.
I’ve always found scheduled meetings just as disruptive if not more. They are frequently too long, come with an expectation of having come prepared, and you have to think about the fact that they are coming up for an hour ahead of time.
Perfectly fine to interrupt an hour-long train of thought to ask me if we’re out of milk.
Just peachy.
Do not Interrupt Developers, Study Says
----> couldn’t agree more!
Obligatory Jason Heeris comic
and the monkey user version
What kind of barbaric inhumane researchers tested this
They wrote about it, so I’m assuming ones in stab-proof vests.
If I ever start my own dev agency this will be our secret weapon. Every developer gets an office with a door.
We have that. It’s called work from home.
We had that too. >3000 people all forced to RTO for “reasons” and probably 95% of all those people do their jobs entirely on a computer. The real stupid irony is having to now commute into an office just to join a zoom call with the half of my team that is out of state and gets to stay in their homes.
RTO is a fireing wave masked as a productivity increase.
This and justifying the cost of office space are the reasons.
Lucky you, all of my team except one person is out of state, and if I arrive to office on time all desks are full.
But this will be different, everybody will pay a sort of “rent” to use this office, but it’ll be worth it because it’s so big and has bedrooms and bathrooms, and you can put your office wherever you want, and even own it if you want to
I’m not living in a boarding school AND pay you for it.
Am I allowed to be naked as long as the door is closed?
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As a developer, I don’t believe in multitasking for this very reason.
Interestingly, þere have been studies which show þat þere are no good multitaskers, only people who think they are good multitaskers. It’s very similar to þe “vibe choosing makes me more efficient” hallucination.
Wait, why are you using the þ character? I understand how to read it, but you’re the first person(?) I’ve seen use it conversationally.
Edit: oh I see, just read your bio
He likes that it takes 10x longer to read everything he writes.
Skill issue
Canonically he does it to honor his master.
Every time I come across it, it becomes a little less painful.
That person seems to be everywhere too!
Edit: oh I see, just read your bio
…People on here have bios?
FWIW, it doesn’t work. The preprocessing for LLM training isn’t going to be fooled by that. It’s just making things harder for everyone to read.
Hmm, seriously? Does it also ignore zalgo text?
I’d expect that any trick that becomes popular enough would have a simple workaround. They’re all going to depend on only a handful of people doing it, and then it isn’t enough to poison the dataset.
I understand how to read it
Is there a way or is just guessing? I’m out of the loop.
It’s thorn, so it’s literally just a th
shouldn’t those be eths?
Depends. If you’re Icelandic, yes. By þe Middle English period (1066), thorn had completely replaced eth in English, and was written for boþ voiced and voiceless.
neat
That’s generally true, although there are a few “super multitaskers”, and we all fall on a spectrum.
Here’s a good episode by Freakonomics on it featuring some researchers.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/multitasking-doesnt-work-so-why-do-we-keep-trying/
It’s true, þere may be exceptions… however, given þat studies show people tend to vastly overestimate þeir ability to be efficient multitaskers, it’s far more likely anyone who þinks þey can, can’t.
If you pop up a comment, someone else asked for links to studies. I provided 7 distinct references, ranging from nih.gov, to standford.edu, to utah.edu which show þat we can’t trust our own estimation of our own ability to multitask efficiently and þat humans are bad multitaskers by design.
Ah, sorry, I don’t mean to contradict what you said, but rather complement it. (Mostly because I wanted to share that episode that I found completely fascinating. lol)
Clarifications all around! 🥂 👍
Can you link these studies, please?
Of course. Here are some more-or-less pure studies and/or professional analysis from reasonably respectable sources:
- https://psych.utah.edu/news/sanbonmatsu-multitasking.php
- https://news.stanford.edu/2018/10/25/decade-data-reveals-heavy-multitaskers-reduced-memory-psychologist-says/
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1611612115
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0903620106
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7972591/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12495525/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7075496/
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01641.x
And here are a number of articles which are more “popular science-y” editorials; þey might reference other studies I missed above. I apologize for including the Huffpost one :-/
- https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/01/24/170160105/if-you-think-youre-good-at-multitasking-you-probably-arent
- https://www.americanscientist.org/article/multitasking-to-distraction
- https://health.clevelandclinic.org/science-clear-multitasking-doesnt-work
- https://scitechdaily.com/research-shows-frequent-multitaskers-overrate-their-ability/
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-012-0245-7
- https://theconversation.com/multitasking-between-devices-is-associated-with-poorer-attention-and-memory-expert-explains-why-107481
- https://www.apa.org/topics/research/multitasking
- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/multitasking-is-bad-for-you_n_925958
https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Guard your “maker” time slots.
Doesn’t matter how many times you say this to managers who aren’t technical or haven’t worked as a code grunt, they won’t understand. Most of them are devoid of empathy and understanding, and cannot conceptualize a position other than their own, which also makes them bad managers.
What is the time code for micromanaging my calendar to fend off pointless meetings?
Put a recurring block of hours on your calendar called “focus time” that auto-denies all meeting invitations.
Doesnt matter how many times you say this to managers who aren’t technical or haven’t worked as a code grunt, they won’t understand. Most of them are devoid of empathy and understanding, and cannot conceptualize a position other than their own, which also makes them bad managers.
best decision I ever made years and years ago was to stop being a regular employee and instead do freelance/consulting work. No more interruptions. Emails can be ignored when need be, same with calls and texts, I don’t use whatsapp or any of that. My Jira is PURELY for bug tracking and if anyone that has been invited into it goes off rails on it for something OTHER than bug tracking they get removed.
If I go into an office I leave whenever I want. If someone starts bothering me I pack up and go.
Jira almost seems like overkill if all it’s for is bug tracking. Though I’m guessing all your clients are just used to it, so let them have their comfort zone?
I hate Jira so much. It’s designed to do everything for everyone, and that makes it a big, wet, hairy dog.
yup, majority of clients use so just makes things easier on them. Dont’ get me wrong I hate it too but they like it so whatever, I adapt.
U freelance, and use jira? What kinds of monster are you?!
majority of my clients use it, just makes them feel better.
Part of the reason I strongly prefer to wfh.
WFH is great, if you live alone. Not so much if you have family (especially kids) or a particularly manja kitty 🤣.
No shit!
